: How did politicians ever get their messages out to voters prior
to the days of television? One can discover their tactics in the
recently mounted exhibition "Push Your Buttons: Politics in
Action," a display of political buttons and other presidential
campaign materials on view at the Cape Fear Museum.
Some 900 lively and colorful campaign buttons, along with related
objects culled from the museum's collection and on loan from area
collectors, are on view in the show that looks at political
campaigns ranging from coastal North Carolina events to statewide
contests to presidential campaigns.
Most of us have a button advertising this or that candidate or
product tucked away somewhere, but serious collectors of
political buttons have a unique perspective of the varied
dimensions of political campaigns.
Until as late as the 1960s, American political campaigns were
directed at what was a select voter pool: literate white men.
Campaign buttons were used to convey the candidate's message,
whether in support of himself or in denigration of his opponents.
Since the beginning buttons and other political advertising
elevated mere mortals to empyrean heights.
